
Class _3S£SaZ- 
Book ,Wn 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSrn 



JpDur Ba^0 of (§o53i 




jTour Ba^0 of (§oh 



By 



Harriet Prescott SpofFord 

Decorations by 
Anna C. Tomlinson 







BOSTON 

RICHARD G. BADGER 

The Gorham Press 
1905 




Copyright 1905 by Harriet Prescott Spofford 



All Rights Reserved 



Vwu Copies WtiCtfivuJ 

JUL 13 1906 

'UMSi. d* AAc. Nw , 
CUPf a. 







Printed at the Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 



:fox Co. tjje Winter is ^ast 










>rl. 










LOOKING at it merely as a 
thing of wonder, among all 
miracles there is no greater 
than the coming of the 
sprmg. The earth was so brown and 
bare and hard, — slowly a mist swathes 
it, the suspicion of a tender green, and 
everywhere the grass is growing, 
everywhere as if each particle of sand 
and soil were aspiring to a higher 
form of being. This stem was yester- 
day like a dead coral branch, to-day 
a tiny red sprout has parted the wood. 
Whence comes it, what is it, by what 
hidden movement, from what un- 
known life? While boughs are bare 
of leaves, all at once the cherry-tree 
has hung a snowy veil of blossoms on 
its stems. What is the imprisoned 



s%.. 




mystery? Then the friendly dande- 
lion hastens to scatter its gold, down in 
the swamps the arum makes a green 
fire, and the maples flush in clouds 
where hints of scarlet are lost in rus- 
set; everywhere sapphire is melting 
into emerald, the willows make a sun- 
shine of their own, a veil of filmy 
^^ grey blends all together in a dream of 
I'^jJ^/'V tender color, and suddenly thickets 
V.^^^ r^^and vines and lofty trees are waving 
f ^S^5^^=:^^ ^verdure clad against the velvet blue. 
ly^C^ And what has done it ? Science may 
explain the whole phenomena in two 
or three sentences. But when all is 
said, has anything been told? By 
whatever process, through whatever 
steps, by whatever agents, is it any- 
thing we have seen but the vivid mani- 
festation of creative force pulsating 
through the planet, springing to light, 
to blade and leaf and flower? In that 



warm, swift beating of vital flame on 
flame does it not seem as though we 
were about to surprise a direct and 
visible intimation of personality and 
were forever on the point of some new 
and longed-for revelation of the divine 
life? Force, say the philosophers, is 
inherent in matter— the pristine demi- 
urgic force. Yet what is force but the 
divine impulse? Matter, they say 
again, is only to be explained by spirit. 
But perhaps an old book says it better, 
"For with thee is the fountain of life." 
And as we walk abroad in this glad 
season, as we pause under the low- 
hanging garlands of the apple orchard 
among their clouds of white and pink, 
and in a sudden ecstacy have our 
heart go out to the bough that touches 
us as if it were a sweet, live thing 
breathing its delicious breath in our 
face, and lift a hand half to caress it 




j^onr Wa^fi of €c09 




before we think; as we stoop where 
the dark blue violets seem to hold an- 
other rendering of what the midnight 
heavens partly reveal and partly hide ; 
as we hear the brooks run ; and catch 
the warble on the wing ; we feel this 
fountain of life flowing through all 
things, the very life of God Himself. 

And if the trees of the Lord are full 
of sap, are we ourselves less subject to 
the heavenly influence ? Flammarion 
has imagined that as in the thin at- 
mosphere of Mars wings may have 
got the start of the majestic world and 
the intelligent being may be the wing- 
; ed being there, so in other worlds the 
vegetable existence may be the con- 
scious and intelligent existence. But 
that is not the case here, at any rate, 
and surely we must be as sentient of 
the divine touch as the brown furrow 
is, as the flowers escaping from it are 



— we who have escaped so much fur- 
ther. The dust of the earth, the stock, 
the stone, the stem, shall not feel this 
great pulsation and the boon be denied 
to us. 

And is it not a fact that in every 
healthy being there comes a feeling of 
buoyancy with the spring, an added 
sense of power, of the fullness of life, 
an increase of purpose, that song 
thrills along a stronger string for the 
poet, that praise wells from the heart 
of the worshipper, as at no other period 
of the round year, that it is a time of ' 
great beginnings? In winter the 
whiteness of the world, the sparkle of 
the stars, may lead the thought up- 
ward ; but in the month of May, when ' 
all else springs, the thought springs 
higher and higher from nothing that 
we see, from nothing we imagine, but 
from a source beyond our understand- 





jFottr Hagg of CSfo^ 

ing, from the unseen, the unknown, 
the beloved, the fountain of life. It is 
high tide, too, in us. We recognize in 
the hope and the happiness of the hour 
that the Lord of life is also the Lord 
of love, and that love is throbbing 
through the universe like its pulse. 

Are we then unconsciously and in- 
voluntarily nearer to God at one time 
than another? That can hardly be. 
Yet ^ve, ourselves, may be more per- 
meable to influence, more sensible of 
outer power, of indwelling spirit, in 
the time of the rushing, breaking, bud- 
ding life. We may then gain the in- 
crement we use later. It is in the 
spring that they scatter the rice abun- 
dantly upon the full-flowing Nile, to 
gather the harvest when the field has 
emerged from the flood, having cast 
their bread upon the waters to find it 
after many days. 



jFotir W»ptt of &0^ 



Surely there is no season when joy, 
the "mere joy of being," so bubbles 
over as now. And is the mere joy of 
being a thing to be despised? Not 
because being is the gift of God, but 
because it is the immanence of God, 
is God in us. For if touching the 
Almighty we cannot find Him out, yet 
we need not think it arrogance to feel 
our Father's life our life also ; nor, so 
long as "the sparrow hath found a 
house, and the swallow a nest for her- 
self where she may lay her young, 
even thine altars," a profanity to 
search, even though it be with simple 
fancies, into the secret places, conject- 
uring what that life so abundantly 
given means. "There is a God in 
Heaven that revealeth secrets," said 
Belteshazzar ; but perhaps only to 
those that seek for them. It may be 
they are hidden that we shall seek. 




jFotir J9»p» of €Cr09 




As the muscle grows that is exercised, 
so does the soul that seeks into spir- 
itual things. While we implore fel- 
lowship we may forget servility. The 
prophet who had very full and high 
vision says that when he prostrated 
himself abjectly the voice said, "Son 
of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will 
speak unto thee." 

But it requires no more than a small 
and limited vision to see the tremen- 
dous revelation the spring always 
makes, as if some splendid certainty 
should compensate us for the unsolved 
mystery otherwhere — not in any broad 
lettering of written promise that the 
soul should live forever, but in the 
suggestions of all subtle analogy while 
the earth rolls up out of shadow and 
the year finds resurrection. From the 
small seed hidden in the blackness of 
death what white wonder of a flower 




^0nv 9»^» 0f &0^ 



is this that has come tremulously into 
the freer life of the outer air, bathed in 
the sunshine of the vaulted heaven ? 
It is not the flower of last year come 
back again, but it is the individual of 
the plant continued in a larger, love- 
lier life, and it gives the dullest mind, 
the darkest doubter, a hint of the sin- 
gleness of the soul, a prophecy of the 
reality of the risen spirit. "Art Thou 
not from everlasting ?" sang he whom 
it is said an angel bore from Judea 
to Babylon on his Master's errand. 
Surely he felt the pristine impulse of 
Deity in him, carried over into eternity, 
an immortal possession. "Art thou 
not from everlasting, O Lord my God, 
mine Holy One ? We shall not die V* 




Mv g>taft e^m BSeaut^ 







IT is when summer pauses at her 
height and the tides of life and 
loveliness are brimmed that 
one feels the whole earth is the 
Lord's garden, and that surely as ever 
he walks in his garden, in the cool of 
the day. Instead of thinking the verse 
a fable, one marvels the interpreta- 
tion is not oftener found, and that not 
only in the four-square plot of Eden 
but everywhere about us, more ap- 
parently in these summer days than 
at other times and seasons, one may 
look for the heavenly presence. "I 
will take my rest, and I will consider 
in my dwelling place like a clear heat 
upon herbs, and like a cloud of dew 
in the heat of harvest." 

It is not only in the wonderful calm 




jFottr Wapi» of &0lf 



and hush of the deep summer morn- 
ing, when all the world perhaps still 
sleeps, when grass and fences are 
drenched with dew sparkling into gems 
in the wind, when the morning star 
has lost itself in clearer luster, and rose 
and gold brighten into perfect light 
full of a great lonely sweetness, that 
one recognizes the being of him who [ 
covers himself with light as with a 
garment, and exclaims, "In thy light 
shall we see light." But when the high 
noon broods over the land with intense 
heat, the strength of the creative power 
broods with it, and a vivifying spirit of 
life seems to fill the whole heaven and 
rain down influence. 

Not always may we receive this 

largess. It must be that it is always 

streaming down, but much depends 

* upon our own receptivity. Absorbed 




jyonr m»p» of CrOi r 

by care or work or grief, our dull ele- 
ments fail to respond, too weak, per- 
haps, to bear so great a flood. But 
once surrendered and abandoned to 
it, soaked through with this deific 
warmth, then we 



Become a living soul, 
While with an eye made quiet by the power 
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
We see into the life of things. 



Against this splendor of azure and 
sunshine steams up the miasma of 
marsh and meadow and rolls along 
the west, a majestic cloud with its huge 
thunderheads, its luminous heights, 
its cavernous bases. As squadrons 
of lances dash into the dark mass of 
the foe, the silvery fog rides in upon 
the sudden wind from sea to meet it. 
The cloud darts forth its javelins of 










iFonr Waps of C(o9 

fire, the air is purple with ominous 
gloom, the livid lake doubles all the 
wild splendor, the thunder bowls from 
hollow to hollow of the cloud, echoes 
in far recesses of heaven and dies in 
wild and awful music. The winds 
pipe and the rains fall, and the battle 
of the elements is on, in great purify- 
ing process, burning and scathing its 
way through the ranks of evil. "The 
earth shook, the heavens also dropped 
at the presence of God." There must 
have been such a tempest among the 
Judean hills when the singer broke 
forth in the Ninety-third Psalm, which 
tradition says was appointed to be 
sung on the sixth day of the week, but 
which should have been, at any rate, 
the inspiration of some splendid thun- 
der-storm rolling from peak to peak, 
where Hermon kept the outpost, or 
where Tabor waited for its glory. 




"Thy throne is established of old: thou 
art from ever-lasting," he cries, over- 
whelmed with the moment's sublimity. 
"The floods have lifted up, O Lord, 
the floods have lifted up their voice: 
the floods lift up their waves," as the 
peals roll away and the rustle and roar 
of the rain re-echoes in the swelling 
torrents. "The Lord on high is might- 
ier than the noise of many waters." 
It is might that sounds the keynote of 
the scene, the might and majesty of 
the old Hebrew days before it was 
known that love casteth out fear. 
How sweet is the air when the rain 
goes sobbing away, the wind with- 
draws to its deep-sea caves, the birds 
shake off showers of song, from every- 
where balms and balsams, long 
breaths of perfume, wander about us, 
the sun sheds his benediction out of 
further depths ! So some great convul- 




jFotir W»pi$ of &0tf 

sion of pain or sorrow leaves us on a 
new earth under a new heaven. Now 
with what imperceptibly swift, warm 
touches the sunbeams fall upon us. 
Can it be that these inconceivably 
gentle throbs are the same electric 
potency that so short time since moved 
with a hemisphere of sound? Yet it is 
the right hand that is glorious in 
power that makes the bare rod bloom 
blossoms and yield almonds. This 
power has not such majesty and 
might that it cannot turn to one with 
love. 

For out of the rain and up from the 
gust with what elastic strength the 
stem of the flower springs back and 
sheds its airy dew ! As you glance at 
it, with a thrill of surprise you have a 
message from every spray, as if the 
still small voice — the voice singing in 
silence — spoke again after the whirl- 




wind and the thunder pass. You are 
wretched, it may be, with a hopeless 
depression; the world is so beautiful 
and you must leave it, or one dearer to 
you than your own being must go, — 
and in death there is no remembrance. 
To lose life, to lose personality, to lose 
those you love, in their identity and the 
potentiality of recognition! And, try- 
ing to overthrow the doubt, you have 
seemed to yourself so trivial, so un- 
worthy- 'What is man that thou art 
mindful of him?" What are you that 
you should dare to think of commun- 
ion with the highest, the vast of love- 
liness and. power? And then a weed 
that has come to blossoming unseen of 
the gardener catches your eye. How^ 
pure is its hue, what precision marks 
its shape, what perfection of design in 
its tiny cup! The gardener may de- 
spise it, but the power that set the stars 




??t 




jFowy SPa^gg of CrOtr 

rolling ordained for its petal that curve 
which might drop out of the lines of 
intersecting orbits, melted those tints 
together, and, since the flower was 
first born, has never failed to mark 
that petal with the two fine lines. And 
shall he waste love so upon a weed 
and have none left for you, aspiring, 
longing, suffering soul? You pluck 
the little flowering weed and look at 
it. Can the utmost grace known to 
art equal the purity of that line? 
hat tissue made of man rivals the 
delicacy of this leaf? What far-reach- 
ing power is this that, through the dark 
and mold, brings the pearly marvel to 
life? What wisdom that never lets its 
seed develop into any other flower, 
that keeps its identity for it through 
death and decay and bursting into new 
life? And shall the weed have more 
honor with that power than has the 



soul of man? "Are ye not much better 
than they?" 

The day declines; it is the enchant- 
ing hour before sunset; the long shad- 
ows are vivid as Dante's broken em- 
eralds; the clarity of the air is like that 
of the heart of a chrysolite; but it is 
living, it is tender, as if there were a 
caress in it; the air bathes one like the 
warm waves of a soft sea. Going 
down the greensward, under the dark 
and ragged pines whose huge length 
and bowery tops have wrestled with 
a thousand storms, to the waterside, 
where the river flows out of its bay of 
myrtle green and gold and runs half 
in the shadow of the opposite wood, 
half in the lustrous sapphire and 
amethyst of a wasp's wing, suddenly 
the sense strikes you anew and more 
completely that here at your hand the 
Lord is walking in his garden in this 




Jfour Wap0 of €Ko9 

cool of the day, not in dream or in 
fantasy or applied interpretation of 
the text, but in very truth. You are 
sensible of the divine nearness, your 
heart goes out in a throb of love and 
adoration to the unknown being beside 
you. And then "love betters what is 
best"; you are made aware that beauty 
can go no farther; that here is the ut- 
most beauty can do; the hour, the 
scene, the light, the loveliness — all 
touch the outer edge of beauty beyond 
which neither its own fact nor your 
imagination canpass; that heaven itself 
to visual sense or the soul's perception 
can have no further beauty. Is it then 
that our power of appreciation is to 
be heightened in order to perceive a 
greater beauty in the realms of the life 
to come? Or is it that the uses of 
beauty belong to this world alone; we 
are to receive its fructifying and de- 




veloping enrichment here, and that, in 
the life beyond, other things— things 
undreamed of— replace it, and we 
never have the same again ? Certain 
it is that, to some, beauty is the reve- 
lation of divine being; it feeds the 
soul; it gives, as Wordsworth has 
said, 

A sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, 

While Shelley, ethereal denier of the 
ethereal, recognized in it 

The mind which feeds this verse 
Peopling the lone universe. 




j^onr l^ap» of €(09 

Perhaps we have called ourselves 
Pagans, refusing creeds, denying dog- 
mas, one dogma only being ours ; that 
such as this is beauty — the melting 
jewels, the springing arch of the rain- 
bow, the sunshine on billowy mea- 
dows, silver slipping of showers, curv- 
ing reaches of river, the clear, cold 
moonlight on mid-ocean that swells 
the heart to breaking, the blue of dis- 
tance, the purple warmth of mountain- 
sides, the long lines that carry the eye 
into the remote and unfathomable, the 
depth of azure in the horizon, where 
all the blue of multitudinous seas has 
crowded itself as this same day is 
crowded with deity. And in the pro- 
found of our being we feel the power 
of this beauty : it has been our joy and 
our consolation ; we have loved it, we 
have worshipped it ; it overflows, we 
see, with the spirit of the Lord, and, 




since "where the spirit of the Lord is 
there is liberty," in such an hour as this 
we find that all unconsciously we have 
been loving and worshipping God. 
Perhaps it is but a gleam of the smile 
of his face we see, perhaps but the 
skirt of his garment — our sight too 
poor, our point of view too small for 
more — but it is he! And it is they 
who love beauty and use it with 
merely sensual delight and to them- 
selves alone, blind to its reach and 
meaning, who commit the sin against 
the Holy Ghost. 

The day may draw down to its cool 
close with glowing west, with the 
music of lowing kine and bells over 
evening water, with puffs of perfume 
on the breeze bringing memories of 
we know not what, from we know 
not where, of ineffable tenderness, 
with a " sound of a going in the tops 



"^N^ihr^ 




--5^"!!T='j»».'«,^ 




jFottr liatgg of €Ro» 

of the mulberry-trees," with that rich 
dusk which seems every moment 
about to open and let some splendor 
out, — and still it is our good moment. 
Another time we may be dull and blind 
as the clod again, but now we find 
ourselves skilled 

To keep 
Heights that the soul is competent to gain. 

Still memory of the great sweet pres- 
ence does not leave us, — though the 
head be filled with dew and the locks 
with the drops of the night. The red 
half moon, riding low and near, a 
friendly thing in the summer south, 
slips down the dark curve of the wood 
and disappears, its touch extinguished 
in the tide below, and the solemn 
heavens still glow and tingle with the 
divine force pulsing through them. 
For now in the height of summer is 



the very fullness of life, and till sleep 
falls upon us we are satisfied with 
consciousness of the fullness of him 

that filleth all in all. 




an llpjermoA -3$ram|i 







WHAT perfection of life 
is this in the Indian 
summer noon, with its 
veiling vapors blue as 
the bloom on the plum, that seem al- 
ways about to lift from some skyey 
mystery, with the sunshine itself mel- 
lowed through all the purple tracery 
of stem and spray in slender tangle 
and drooping curve, with the country- 
side still stained in color, with the soft, 
slow wind streaming from indolent 
tropics of balm as if born in the 
Islands of the Blest, the wind which 
blows from the chambers of the south ! 
But just now it was so different. 





^0uv IBupi^ of &0tf 



How dreary was the day, how im- 
possible it was to send the thought 
beyond the gray and lowering sky, 
how unfriendly seemed all nature, 
what depression in the chill air and 
grim outlook, how sinister the night- 
fall ! The wind whistled with storm 
upon its wings, it roared in the tree- 
tops, and sent the rote of the sea up 
like a thrilling note of despair. In 
the summer storm, when we are 
young and strong, we rise on it with 
exultant spirit, but if the years have 
laid heavy hand upon us, and whether 
they have or not, the autumn storm 
makes us aware of our defenseless- 
hess and gives us a strange despon- 
dency. How altogether vain we felt 
ourselves when out in the growing 
gale — straws driven before it scarcely 
more helpless ! Fierce texts ran 
through our thoughts, "He hath bent 




his bow like an enemy." We saw, as 
twilight gathered, the earth without 
form and void, and when the wind 
mounted with wild screams we said, 
" He shall come up as clouds, and his 
chariots shall be as a whirlwind, his 
horses are swifter than eagles. Wo 
unto us ! " And in the night, as the 
house trembled, we thought of sailors 
driving on the coast, and we slept 
only by fits and starts and woke sur- 
prised, ashamed and full of as unreas- 
onable joy to find the skies blue, the 
winds laid and the sunshine pouring 
in showers. "Weeping may endure 
for a night, but joy cometh in the 
morning." As we look out and search 
what the Ptolemaists called the sap- 
phire-crystalline, we understand some- 
thing of the feeling the singer of the 
psalm of most wild melancholy and 
ardent imploration had. " Sing this," 





jfonr 2lAS!6i of CrOir 

he said, " to the tune of the Hind of 
Dawn." 

Come out then, this bright fall day 
into the nearer and thinner woods, the 
green moss underfoot overlaid with 
floating gold, the canopy above alive 
and gay with flickering points of light. 
Though it be noonday, the raindrops 
glitter on leaf and brier with the re- 
flection of still purple ash and golden 
beech and scarlet maple, ruby and 
topaz and amethyst and beryl, — the 
treasure house the king built "for 
silver and for gold, and for precious 
stones, and for spices and for shields, 
and for all manner of pleasant jewels" 
not so splendid as this bit of boscage 
of which the sun and wind are treas- 
urers, and where none can turn the 
key upon us. " O thou afflicted, tossed 
with tempest and not comforted, be- 
hold I will lay thy stones with fair 



colors and lay thy foundations with 
sapphires. And I will make thy win- 
dows of agates, and thy gates of 
carbuncles, and all thy borders of 
pleasant stones." Was it not well to 
have the gloom for the sake of the 
glory, the storm for the sake of the 
vast woodland peace ? " Awake, O 
north wind; and come thou south; 
blow upon my garden, that the spices 
thereof may flow out ! " 

What wonder is this that flutters 
into our hands — painted in all fine 
blending of tint, color-discords re- 
solved into harmonies in an inch of 
space — what delicate design, what 
artistry is it, to have been done by the 
same mighty forces that roll the stars; 
the sunbeam, swinging a planet on 
its tip, moving lightly as a pencil that 
drips with color here? Long ago, 
concerning the work of his hands, one 





jFottr aiggiSi of €Ko» 

said, " I will also glorify them and 
they shall not be small." As the light 

< sketches some prodigal artist tosses 
into the waste-basket are taken out 
by the peasant people with whom he 
stayed, and pinned against the wall, 
so, when we presently go back to 
play our part again in the life of the 
town — " thou that art full of stirs, a 
tumultuous city, a joyous city " — we 
will take this leaf and others with us 

^to lay perhaps in the book we read, 

To mark great places with due gratitude. 

As we stand here and watch leaf 
after leaf drifting down, the thought 
has more than once assailed us that 
the race like the tree survives, but we 
like the leaf fall and are lost. We all 
do fade as a leaf, we sadly murmur. 
But as we look at this ripe thing lying 



on our palm, we also ripen as a leaf, 
we say, and drop at last in the death 
which is only another form of life, 
which is only new life set free. It is 
out of this setting free of new life, this 
change of the leaves from their sub- 
stance, that the warmth let loose gives 
us this sweet Indian summer weather 
in which we walk abroad and fancy 
the day — with its pearly dawning, its 
rich noon life, its spicy afternoon fra- 
grances, its early hazes that stretch an 
aerial barrier between us and the com- 
mon place and island us in the ideal — 
is a day, not lost out of June, but hint- 
ing of a season lovelier yet than June, 
as if from the great body of death on 
earth were evolved the climate of the 
heavenly parallels. We all do fade 
as a leaf, but why not also as a flower ? 
And should there be sadness in the 
fading of the flower when in the 





^ont l^ap» of Cf0Xf 

act of fading it leaves its seed, not its 
son, not its heir, but the concentration 
and essence of itself, the thing that 
shall return a rose and not a lily, a 
lily and not a violet, its principle of 
life, its perpetuity, its identity? "The 
flower fadeth because the spirit of the 
Lord bloweth upon it." And the spirit 
of the Lord is the spirit of life. 

But hark ! We heard a little while 
ago as we stood, the honk of the wild 
geese flying over, distance softening 
their cry to a wilder, sweeter music 
than that of the huntsman's horn. 
And now what is this sudden rush and 
flutter of lesser wings? Look out 
over the open. What a whirlwind of 
flickering lines rises from the reeds of 
the wide marshes, what a myriad of 
winnowing wings, what life, what 
motion, what swinging together, what 
fanning apart, what a cloud of sparks 



and shadows, darkening the sky for a 
moment, now go soaring away into 
the sun ! " A bird of the air shall carry 
the voice, and that which hath wings 
shall tell the matter." O birds flying 
south, what stirs you, what conducts 
you ? How do you know, fledglings 
of a year, what happy fields may lie 
beyond ? Into what skies do you pen- 
etrate; what life awaits you there? 
What hope, what buoyant certainty 
leads you along your path into heaven 
beyond heaven, and welcoming fields 
at last ? St. Francis of Assisi called 
you " My brothers, the birds." How 
much more confidence in the hand 
that leads you have you than we who 
are not saints and do not often pause 
to call you our brothers ! It is not you 
who are of little faith. 

Even the flowers, the leaves, push- 
ing forth into another climate, have 







iFotir JP«g» of CKoli 

more confidence than we. After all, 
may it be that the possibility of faith 
is a distinct faculty, and its habit, like 
that of any other faculty, is a thing to 
be cultivated, to be nourished, to be 
strengthened, not stimulated and fed 
into the overgrowth oif superstition, 
but cared for and protected till strong 
and fine it reaches clear sunlight? 
Can it be that it is in its beginning 
purveyor of the food that feeds the 
very seed of the soul ? 

The afternoon wanes, the moon 
swims up clad in golden mists — the 
cold hunter's moon that has lasted 
over into the November days. It is 
but a little while since the harvest 
moon held the heavens, casting the 
blackness of the great trees, the trem- 
ulous shadows of the upper boughs, 
into dusky aisles of dreamland, filled 
with " the precious things put forth by 



Diwwk'jvtsinnnMQMraRiakMtataiiTtw^^ 



the moon" — the warm and mellow 
moon, flooding- the hollpw of the sky 
with wonderlight, hanging overhead 
like some great brooding moiher-bird, 
as if 

An slbatropiS asleep, 
Balanced on her wings of light, 
i Hovered in the purple night 

But now this colder, whiter moon sails 
up the sky, drawing a woven veil of 
mists up with her from river and wood 
and field. All the world grows dim 
and weird and sad again. There is ho 
tree, there is no rock ; we are shut off, 
lost and alone in sjpace; and all the 
sparkle of the fire upon the hearth, 
the warmth of dear human smiles and 
glances, the sound of singing and 
laughing voices cannot quite banish 
the spectre of the white gloom outside. 
Yet when, hours afterward, we look 
out from the window of our upper 




■gfottr giapgg of CrO^ir 

chamber, the mist has risen like the 
tide of a v/hite sea and overtopped 
the breathing world, but far above in 
the clear transparence of depths of 
midnight blue moves the "faithful wit- 
ness in heaven," splendid as an arch- 
angel's shield made of one jewel, an 
impersonate force of nature always 
pursuing its way above mists and 
darkness, serene and strong, with the 
poet's white fire laden indeed, but 
laden also with the promise of " abun- 
dance of peace so long as the moon 
endureth." 

And as we lift our eyes, and our 
soul seems interpenetrated with the 
glory of the upper and outer night, we 
almost seem ourselves to see the city 
that had "no need of the sun, neither 
of the moon to shine in it." 




fixm tjje ^ixiQ, g>at in 
tje Winter House 




^at In t^r 

WHY should one un- 
lessoned in creeds, 
who looks on the chill 
repose of death believe 
in continued life? Why should one 
bending over the loathly worm believe 
in the winged fly? And why should 
one in the power of the wintry world, 
when the cold earth seems dead as the 
dead shape lately hidden by its clods, 
take courage for a future? Yet courage 
merely means reliance upon power, 
power to overcome, power to endure, 
power to love and to be loved. And 
is not true reliance based, consciously 
or otherwise, upon the evidence of 
things not seen, upon assurance of 





jFour Wap» of €r09 

never failing fonts of strength, assur- 
ance that God lives in his world? 

The Buddha, it is told, once met a 
man who, being born blind, had no 
conception of color. "Light?" he said, 
"Color? Radiant surfaces ? It is all 
a dream. The rose has shape — I feel 
it. It has perfume, — I perceive it. 
But the tint of which you speak, — it 
is a superstition, an illusion!" The 
god went on his way. "Remain," he 
said, "in darkness, till you need light. 
Had you received hospitably the 
notion of something transcending 
your own powers, a new world had 
opened to you, and in the effort to 
bridge the space between you and that 
world wings would have grown on 
your soul!" 

But see, through the chill air this 
wintry morning a fine frozen mist de- 
scends, a web of woven silver when a 



ff0nv Wap» of cs^oir 



slant light touches it, hiding river and 
shore and field as much as if one were 
lost in some frozen nebula of the inter- 
stellar cold, could such thing be; and 
the thought comes involuntarily 
whether, were one wandering in the 
lonely spaces of realms unknown to 
this, would one then be less conscious, 
less observant, less a being still? A 
wind comes parting the veil of frozen 
gossamer and shredding it to ragged 
vapor— He bringeth the wind out of 
his treasuries,— the sun bursts through 
and changes it to airy gold; there float 
up the river shores, all violet and tend- 
er fawns; there gloom the dark pines; 
carrying on its tide of fluent sapphire 
the snow-crusted glitter of its broken 
ice floes, sweeps the river far away in- 
to the rosy reaches of the east; and two 
great eagles come sailing down the 
wind. Surely if beauty be not the 




jl^otir IPa^si of $Kfo9 





being of God himself, but is only the 
skirt of his garment, the Lord is pass- 
ing down this way ! 

Nor is it all — this morning beauty — 
in the larger forces of the great tide, 
the solemn wood. See the frosty rime 
sparkling upon the parapet of the 
bridge, each crystal set in wrought- 
work of spun silver — And the hoary 
frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? 
See where on every bough and spray 
the settling, freezing vapor has caught 
the sun and has become a spark of 
fire, and the air is atoss with live rub- 
ies and emeralds and topazes — He 
hath entered into the treasures of his 
snow — and the whole cold, dead world 
is glancing and quivering with life, 
while the shadow of every drift, the 
color in the heart of every rift of the 
ice, is the very blue of heaven. 

But just beyond us the wood looms 



again. Here at the entrance the wind 
sings over the tree-tops like a career- 
ing spirit, but going farther all sound 
ceases. Save for the rare lifting of an 
iron bough the falling of a weight of 
snow, all seems the silence of death. 
But is it so? What streak of light 
w^as that darted up the tree bole with 
the chipmunk ? Here is the print on 
the snow, one foot before the other in 
a single line, where the wary mink 
has passed; and how soft was this fluff 
of feathers that blundered with the 
startled owl across our faces! Down 
in the cedar swamp a flock of finches 
and jays and robins chuckle over the 
blue juniper berries; here the black 
and white woodpeckers swarm all 
about the boughs, clinging to the un- 
der side of the stems and quarrying for 
the hidden store within. But they are 
here as we are, animate beings, making 






the best of things. Listen, then — that 
tinkle, airy, remote, like a crystal bell 
in a dream — it is drop by drop of the 
living water of the little rivulet and it 
falls beneath the ice; and wherever it 
flows the chemic power of the life of 
the great planet flows with it — 

Put like fire from off thy finger. 

Here a dead leaf floats by us; its 
work is done, but something pushed it 
from its place, the thrill within the new 
bud there. The breath of the wind 
steals in now over this open glade and 
rifles the silky milkweed pod of its 
seeds, seeds where the life lies sus- 
pended, as it may sleep in the Orient- 
al mage who has himself buried in the 
earth for a month or a year to be 
taken back some day to life and light 
again. Here is a chrysalis glued to a 
stem; it holds in its long sleep not the 



-.-^x^/^ 




jF^ur l^as» 0f'Cs^o9 



developing creature, but the folded, 
finished thing absorbing what it needs 
of the old body as the soul absorbs 
the issues of this life. See how vivid 
with their crimsonjuices are the stems 
of the wild roses, as we come out 
again ; down there at the foot of the 
field, where a flight of crows go caw- ] 
ing and flapping home, the willow | 
boughs are like green and golden 
flames. A cold and dead and frozen j 
world? No, it is full of warmth and ' 
cheer and motion. The principle of. 
life is never absent from it ; even were ' 
it slumbering it is there, ready to wake. ' 
Everywhere throughout the apparent '/^^ 
dark and cold is warmth and light — ^ 
if we seek it. Everywhere, the vision 
growing strong and clear in the out- 
look, is the Creator and Preserver to 
be found. 

But the wind comes from the sea ; 




>9 






the storm blows up and the snow falls. 
Each flake gives the cheek a soft and 
cool caress and its crystal passes in 
beauty on the hand. Its dance ' 
mimics and outdoes the dance of the 
swarming gnats, while it hangs 
wreaths of immaterial bloom upon the 
loftier boughs, and spreads a downy 
coverlid upon the little roots of the 
grass beneath. And if the gale grow 
to tempest it is with the triumphant 
sensation of overcoming evil that we 
t^breast it and defy it. How white and 
purified is the earth then at last ! How 
spiritual its aspect and horizon! 
s'^What a winged thing it seems ! And 
we spread our wings with it. As we 
walk home some night when such 
a storm has blown away, tired, per- 
haps, and chilled, it may be depressed 
ith care and full of gloom, even 
doubting all things, how the last still 




jFonr 1^9pi$ of @(o9 



glow of the receding sunset, with its 
clarity of rich pomegranate tint, draw- 
ing away over the snowy fields and 
their violet shadows, pictures a glow- 
ing hearth, invites us like the blaze of 
a father's fireside, gives us a sense of 
warmth and joy and cheer, as if we 
heard a welcoming voice calling us 
home, assuring us of love and peace. 
And, as long levels of sea and meadow 
and vast mountain forms and receding 
skies affect us like the contemplation 
of infinity, so when, a shining jewel 
in the midst of a clear glow, the 
evening star looks out from illimitable 
distances we know the welcoming 
voice was the voice of infinite things. 
But now all the stars are out, Arc- 
turus with his sons and the bands of 
Orion. No summer skies are ever 
stripped so bare of even a breath. 
The great planets fly like lampads 




j^onr ^ap» of &0tf 



JiGitf 




running with their torches. There is 
no film between us. The farther stars 
hang out of heaven like living spirits. 
How near they are, how we seem a 
part of them, to be going on with them, 
how they swing down towards us out 
of the Milky Way, the Path of Souls 
up which our imagination travels to- 
wards universes beyond and yet be- 
yond and comes out upon the far sup- 
ernal light, while the wind sings by us 
as if it knew the way ! 

In their slow wheel, their measured 
distance, their solemn lustre, we see 
groups of worlds obeying law, ac- 
knowledging the necessity of rule, the 
loveliness of order. And the song 
they sing together seems to be a 
mighty declaration that law must be 
the expression of will, that there can 
be no will except that of a personality, 
that this Personality — Suddenly we 



jFowr aPa^iS of €r09 



have come close upon God. Yet not 
to tremble. For although this chief 
and first of beings must have the chief 
and first of qualities, and although up- 
ward and downward gaze alike give 
us to see the power ; we are left to dis- 
cover for ourselves that greater than 
power is love. Life of the germ that 
all the unfigured cold of outer aether 
cannot destroy wakes into beautiful 
growth at a touch of the sun. What 
more shall we ask for the Divine than 
Love and Power ? 

And now the constellations grow 
paler and the moon sends a glory be- 
hind her as she floats up, up, up — 
so low she rode in summer, so high 
she rides tonight! In the middle of 
the highest sky she spreads her wings, 
while far, far off and faint the lumin- 
ous nebulae still hang like the reflec- 
tion of distant palace lights. What 




jrontr mapii <»f es^oir 



broad lusters, what sharp shadows on 
the snow, what reflection into heaven, 
what height, what depth, what bend- 
ing of the infinite spaces, what tender- 
ness in the midnight blue, what sense of 
divine presence ! For exalted and en- 
larged to all the limit of our vision on 
this winter night we see the sky is full 
of God ! 




JUL 13 »90^ 



